Heart and Soul
by T. W. Patchwork
Summary: Sasori's luck is running out. In a last gesture of love, he leaves something behind for Deidara, his lover. Now Deidara has to cope with the most bizarre present ever. Konan & Kakuzu must race against time and Pein to keep the rest of them safe or else.
1. Rain, Rain, Let Me Stay

Sasori didn't want to get out of bed. He didn't want to get up, get dressed, and go out in the cold rain he heard pounding on the roof of the lair. _Stupid mission. _But a mission was a mission and Sasori had no wish to confront Leader. No matter how strong his misgivings about it were. In fact, the sneaking suspicion that this would be his last mission had been haunting him for quite a while now. A shinobi has only so much luck and he could feel his running out…

"Hmm…Sasori?" The sleepy mutter interrupted his dark thoughts. He grinned at the blonde sleeping next to him. Deidara was the biggest reason he didn't want to go on the mission and was proving to be his biggest obstacle in getting out of the bed they shared. Sasori gently removed the other man's arms from around his waist and slid quietly out of bed. He dressed quickly and gathered his puppet scrolls.

The neon red glow of the alarm clock displayed the time almost violently: 2:47. About half an hour before he had to leave and a good five hours before Deidara would even begin to stir. Sasori rummaged around in his desk, pulling out three pieces of paper and a pen. The first letter he finished in a few minutes; it was addressed to Deidara in the event that he failed to return. The second letter was also to his lover but it took Sasori much longer to write. He hoped it would explain everything to him. What he had been developing over the last few months, why he decided to use it, why he had done it. When done with both he slipped them into identical envelopes and wrote Deidara's name on them, one in black ink, the other in blue. He fervently hoped that Deidara would receive the blue from Konan. She was the only Akatsuki member who would respect Sasori's commands, the ones he was writing on the third sheet of paper. Itachi would also play a role in his scheme but that was only on coincidence due to the positioning of his room.

As an afterthought, he wrote a brief letter to Kakuzu as the organization's medic-nin. He would probably be the only one interested in noting the symptoms for future reference—and the only one about to take decent legible notes at that. Because if it _did _work, Leader was going to try to capitalize on Sasori's discovery. The puppet master smirked. No one would be able to get past the puzzle…none of the Akatsuki members at any rate. That cabinet held all of his most deadly poisons and experiments. He had designed it to be Tobi-proof but found the rest of his coworkers to be idiots as well.

His writing finished, Sasori kissed the sleeping Deidara good-bye. On his way out, he deposited the bundle of letters outside the door to Konan's room. The woman was an early riser, thank Kami. He stood in front of the lair's main door. For half a second, Sasori prayed to Kami, Hashin or whoever Hidan blathered on about all day, whatever deity that happened to be listening that he might to be allowed to come back alive. Then Deidara wouldn't have only a piece of paper to explain what the hell was going on.

He sighed and stepped out into the cold rain, his form obscured by the drizzle as he walked away.


	2. Words I Never Wanted to Hear

Hello!! Yes, I'm back from the dead. And the story must be somewhat decent if you've made it to the second page. I congratulate you. As I am not a fan of long author-to-reader messages, I will make this quick. I do not own any Naruto character or anything associated with Naruto. This is a _fanfic_. Use your brain. The plotline and the inane dialogues are _mine_. Therefore, all mistakes are mine. Now on with the story!

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Deidara hacked up whatever was left of dinner into the toilet. After a few dry heaves, he rested his head on the cool porcelain and sighed. _Stupid virus. _He had fallen horribly ill soon after Sasori-danna left on his mission. For nearly three weeks he had had a high fever, painful stomach cramps, and extreme vomiting. Itachi had been the first to experience his symptoms first hand: he had barfed all over the Konoha missing-nin. Itachi had reacted like a wet cat, jumping up, hissing, and running away to change. Everyone laughed…until it happened to them. Apparently the pathogen was still in his system even though it had been a full three months. _Kami, I can't wait until Sasori-danna comes back. I hope he didn't test any of his weird potion shit on me. _Deidara groaned at the memory of the first and last time he had agreed to be a test subject for his danna. He had broken out in purple hives; Tobi called him the Grape Monster for a week. The door creaked open. Deidara groaned louder as the dark figure of Itachi loomed in the doorway. _Why, why did his room have to be next to the bathroom?! _

Itachi stared at the pitiful sight before him. Deidara's blonde hair was loose from its usual pony tail and was strewn about his shoulders in a tangled mess. The man's face was pale; the bags under his eyes stood out like purple crescents and his blue eyes were bloodshot. _I hope he's not having a relapse. _"Do you want me to get Kakuzu?"

Deidara wiped his mouth before answering. "No."

Itachi sighed softly. He had no wish to deliver the message he had been entrusted with to Deidara, not while he was in this state. "Deidara?" He looked up. "Leader-sama wishes to speak with you," Itachi braced himself for the next words, "about Sasori." He closed his eyes. When he opened them, the Iwa missing-nin stood in front of him.

"Give me a few minutes to get cleaned up, un." Itachi nodded.

"The others will be waiting for you in the kitchen." It was Deidara's turn to nod.

True to Itachi's words, the other members of Akatsuki were congregated at the kitchen table. They were eerily quiet. Usually the table was the site of brawls and insane dialogues; laughter was as much a fixture in the kitchen as the sink. Leader stood when Deidara entered the room. Kakuzu glared as he guessed why his patient had been late for the informal meeting. Konan played morosely with a pile of paper. Hidan, Kisame, and Itachi avoided his gaze. Zetsu and Tobi were absent, on a mission.

"Deidara, I regret to inform you that your partner Sasori is dead." Leader cut to the chase. "He left—"

"How long?"

"What?" Leader wasn't used to being interrupted.

"How long has he been dead, un?"

It was Konan who answered Deidara. "He was killed a week after leaving the lair. He left you this." She handed him a letter. His name was scrawled across it in black ink; it was without a doubt Sasori's handwriting.

Leader continued his speech. "We felt that it was best for you to recover from your illness before having to deal with the trauma of losing your…partner." A moment of awkward silence paralyzed the ninja in the room. "You are dismissed." The others filed out of the room. Deidara began walking towards his room.

He had feared for the worst when Sasori-danna didn't return on time but he had kept hoping against the odds. He had mentally prepared for this day for a long time. That didn't keep grief from shredding his heart into tiny scraps though. Deidara was caught in his gloomy thoughts when someone pulled him into the bathroom.

If you've made it this far and haven't thrown your computer out the window, please hit the review button and leave a comment. (Or maybe you did toss the moniter off the second floor and you wish to complain, still click the button. Flames are accepted too.)


	3. A Letter to My Love

Hello, again! Yes, I am aware that I have just spammed up your inboxes with the notice that I have updated. Hopefully, you will enjoy this chapter. Please review. Feedback is welcome, good or bad. Flame me. I don't care. Just hit the review button once you're done even if it's just to tell me I'm doing a sucky job. Enough with my blabbering, on with the story!

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"What the hell?!" The cloaked figure locked the door before spinning around to face him. The blonde stared baffled at the only woman in the Akatsuki. "Konan? What's going on, un?"

"That letter is not for you."

"But Leader-sama said that Sasori—"

"--left it for you? He did but there was another letter." She drew an identical envelope out of her cloak's inner pocket and handed it to him. Deidara noticed that his name was written in blue. "Sasori left four letters for me. Two were sets of instructions, one for Kakuzu, one for me. I was to look for strange symptoms; I think he might have been instructed to do so too. If none appeared after three months, I was to give you the black letter."

"But I've been sick for _three months_, un. Why didn't you give it to me when I up-chucked on Itachi?"

Konan shrugged. "Directions. Same with the blue letter; Sasori didn't say why. Maybe he did in that." She gestured to the envelope in his hand. "By the way, Leader doesn't know about that one. He read the black letter. Sasori wrote that whatever happened, symptoms or no symptoms, he was never allowed to see the blue letter. If your condition remained normal, I was to burn it."

The blonde man found himself at a loss for words. "Thank you. It must have been hard for you to hide something from Leader-sama, un."

At this Konan smiled. "Every girl has her secrets. Life's no fun without them." She left the bathroom, her last words floating to his ears. "I would read that right away if I were you." Burning with curiosity, Deidara sped to his room and locked the door. He sat down on his bed. _I should read the black letter first._ As he did so, tears leaked from his eyes. Sasori had written of his love for him. He had also written that his greatest wish for Deidara was happiness and had freed his lover to love again. He turned to the blue letter. Deidara hesitated before opening the envelope.

It was written in a different mood than the first. It started:

_**Deidara,**_

_**If you are reading this, I am dead. Pushing up daisies. Kicked the bucket. Buried the hamster (ask Tobi about that one; there's an interesting story behind it). But even as I think of euphuisms for death, my eyes keep straying to your still form, curled in my bed. I wish that…**_

Deidara blushed heavily as he read the next lines. He thanked Konan a thousand times in his mind for keeping this from Leader. He could imagine the look on Leader's face as he read the thought provoking and slightly, oh who the hell was he kidding, _completely_ lecherous paragraph. _Damn it. Who knew Sasori was so… descriptive? _It seemed that after allowing himself one indulgence Sasori reverted to a conversation-like tone in the following paragraphs. It continued:

_**Deidara, when I met you it was like someone had turned on a light in the darkness of my life. You lit up my world and made me truly happy for the first time in my life. You were my heart and soul. **_Tears welled in Deidara's eyes. _**If I were ever to lose you, I know that an irreparable hole would have been ripped inside my very being. I cannot imagine what you are going through now but I have tried to remedy it the only way I knew how. **_The blonde furrowed his brow in confusion. What was Sasori talking about? _**I broke my promise to never test any concoction of mine on you; it was necessary for what I planned. The potion I slipped into your tea this morning is still in the experimental stage. **_"He WHAT?!" Deidara screeched. _**In fact, I have no idea if I dosed you correctly or what. I just dumped a whole vial into the mug. But if you're reading this, it must have worked.**_

_**The basic premise of the potion was to alter your hormonal levels (it must also act as a highly potent aphrodisiac which explains why you almost attacked me last night). **_Deidara blushed again. He remembered pushing his danna onto the bed… The next few sentences were full of scientific terms that were over his head so he skipped down to the next line he could understand.

_**I know you've just skipped those last lines, I can imagine the guilty look on your face now, so I will translate them for you. How I wish I was there to tell you this myself, to see your eyes go wide in disbelief, to have you lift me off the ground in fury and shake me until my teeth rattle in my head. **_Deidara was getting nervous now. _**I know that no one will ever be able to replace me in your heart (don't lie. I know you've been thinking it. I'm not just being egotistical.) I also know that you are grieving at the moment. So I have left someone behind to comfort you and love you. I don't know who they are or even their gender. It is my pleasure to be the first to say this.**_

_**Congratulations, Deidara. You're pregnant. Approximately three months along if Konan listened to my instructions. She and Kakuzu are the first people you should turn to. Kakuzu is an old friend of mine as well as a medic-nin. Konan loves children and is the only female. Hopefully, she will help you raise our child; she knows all kinds of useful things. Always remember, Deidara, I love you. Goodbye for now. We will meet again someday.**_

_**Your faithful lover,**_

_**Sasori**_

_**P.S—You may NOT name the child after me. If you do, I will find some way to get Jashin to order Hidan to hunt your ass down and use you for a sacrifice. **_

Congradulations, you made it this far. Now R&R. (Hey, that rhymed.)

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